Samsung, how far you've come. The Korean electronics giant has been quietly plugging away at smartphones for a decade, dabbling with Palm and Windows Phone, and its own Java-based quasi-smartphone OS before finding its feet with its first round of Galaxy S phones.

It was the Galaxy S II, though, that led Samsung to truly break out in the U.S. The Galaxy S II was released under that name on three out of four major wireless carriers, which meant that Samsung could start powerful marketing campaigns around the phone. Once the Galaxy S III came out as the "anti-iPhone," available by the same name on every carrier, Samsung's place in the sun was cemented.

Unlike its competitor Apple, Samsung still sells a broad range of smartphones in different shapes, sizes and operating systems. Along with Android, Samsung has kept its toe in the Windows Phone 8 water with recent releases like the Samsung Ativ Odyssey for Verizon Wireless, and it's developing its own smartphone OS, Tizen.

If we look back through the history of Samsung's smartphones, we can see the seeds of Galaxy success as far back as 2008, when the company started stabbing at the idea of branded, full-touch smartphone interfaces in the Instinct and Omnia.

Those phones were held back by their underlying operating systems, though. The Instinct used a custom, cobbled-together Java OS that couldn't provide the responsiveness and extensibility we expect from a modern smartphone. The Omnia tried to graft touch-friendly widgets onto Windows Mobile, an old operating system designed for days when everyone used a stylus with their smartphone.

We've been reviewing Samsung handsets for more than a decade. As we prepare for the Galaxy S4, let's look back at how Samsung scaled the lofty heights of the smartphone market.